EP. 61 — Upgrade Your Mind with Poppy Jamie

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, I hope you’re well, and if you aren’t well, then maybe today’s episode will help because the work of the person I am bringing on today has helped me massively. I have known her for God years and years and years, I think, since she was a teenager and have watched her truly, truly evolve in every way a person can. And I’ve watched her start off as a TV host and somehow find her way to being one of the leading positive voices in mental health care. And she is such a warm, informed, self informed, self educated, unpretentious, excellent, kind human being, someone that I often wish that I was more like. And so I’m thrilled to have her on the podcast today. Her name is Poppy Jamie, if you aren’t already following her on Instagram, you absolutely should because she’s the best. All you will find is positive and uplifting content. We talk so much about the neuroscience behind behind mental health and and our patterns and where they come from and and what our human tendencies are that often we shame ourselves over when we have no choice because certain instincts of ours override the thing that we wish our brain would do. And it’s because of her own journey with mental health and the mental health of family members of hers that she had to work through, that she decided to learn exactly how her brain works, exactly how this computer, this machine inside of her works in order to be able to work out what she can and can’t control. And that’s so empowering. It’s such an empowering and interesting way to approach mental health and something that I’ve never considered. Even though I’d read so much and I’d had so much therapy, I never thought about the basic functions of my brain that I cannot help. And how do I understood those earlier? I would have spent so much less time beating myself up and I would have known how to approach whatever it was that I was feeling better. She has a book coming out called Happy Not Perfect: Upgrade Your Mind, Challenge Your Thoughts and Free Yourself From Anxiety. It’s out on June 8th and she’s just the fucking best. So please enjoy learning so much about your brain from the wonderful Poppy Jamie. Poppy Jamie, I had you on My Ask Jamila Anything podcast, and now you’re here because you blew my mind on that to the point where I was like more people. We need even more people to hear this woman because she’s blowing me away. Welcome to I Weigh. Thank you so much for being here. [00:03:01][181.4]

Poppy: [00:03:02] Thank you so much for having me. [00:03:04][1.8]

Jameela: [00:03:05] I, uh, I have known you since you were 19. So that is since 2009. We’ve known each other from the very beginning of my career because I used to meet you when you were young, budding TV host, and you also worked in a little gift lounge at T4 on the Beach, which is an old TV show that I used to host on a beach in seven different types of weather, all in the same day where you would be sunburned and also hailed at at the same time in gale force winds. And we would do that every single summer. There were fifty thousand people live there on the beach that I would host in front of, as well as live on television, where sometimes it was so windy that the teleprompter would actually blow off the top of the camera off into the sea while I was live on air and I would just freestyle. But that’s where I would meet you backstage as you were becoming a TV host and and entering into this industry. And it’s so nice to see where you’re at now. All these years later, as one of the leading voices online in mental health, [00:04:09][64.3]

Poppy: [00:04:11] it is so crazy that and so beautiful, I think about life, really, that you meet people on your journey and you’ve got no idea how your lives will cross. And our lives have just been this like beautiful criss-cross. And I have to say, you’ve just been the kindest person from when I was 18 years old. They Jameela, Jameela. And you’ve just been oozed with kindness, been so compassionate, so sweet, always taken me under your wing and you’ve never changed. And I will always be just so grateful to have kind. And also it’s just such a love. It just really is a life affirming when you do meet people like you because you’re like people are really kind out there. [00:04:58][47.3]

Jameela: [00:04:59] That’s nice. And we weren’t always in a very kind industry either. And and yet we kind of we came up alongside each other in so many parallels. And it’s been so interesting that two very different women who’ve had two very different life experiences have consistently kind of moved along these parallels and ended up in the same space of around the same time, starting to kind of unravel. And in our journey back to who we are or journey towards who we want to be, we’ve decided to bring as many people along the ride with us as possible. I am I’m so keen to understand, like, when did your because you weren’t this is definitely not something that either of us were focused on when we first got into the industry. In fact, I think you and I both considered ourselves because we were both very bubbly and bright and always happy and always smiling. I definitely remember that about you. We were people who I always thought I was just fine until I fell apart. I didn’t think I ever had any mental health issues. I thought that my feeling of panic all the time was just because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know that that was a condition called anxiety. And so is this something that you were aware of back then or has this been a journey towards mental health? [00:06:15][75.8]

Poppy: [00:06:16] It is amazing that 10 years ago we don’t even speak the words mental health to each other, it was so far away from our vocabulary our conversation. And obviously it just shows you how how quickly the world has changed, thankfully, but also how much our understanding of the mind and our emotional experience as human beings have changed as well, because as yet completely the same as you, I understood and was conditioned to be happy, polite, performative. And even when I was feeling deeply insecure, terribly anxious, unbelievable perfectionism, I kind of thought that that was normal. And I was the only one, obviously having those feelings. And obviously now we realize that we aren’t the only ones. There are millions of people out there. And when I had that moment of realization, that was when I decided to change my entire life to focus on bringing tools to mental health. But I do say I do caveat with my mom is a psychotherapist. So I was aware of the mind. But it’s so different when your mother is a psychotherapist to actually understanding for yourself that you’ve got you’ve got to do something. And I was aware of it because my father suffered from severe mental illness with chronic stress and anxiety throughout his lifetime. And so I learned from a young age that mental health was something that you couldn’t see, but yet had a tremendous impact on everybody around around them. And and also from my mother, I understood that there were always things that you could change about the mind, but it was kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, my mom. Yeah, yeah yeah. And really, it took me to have a breakdown to realize actually we it’s it’s one thing knowing something, it’s another thing doing something. [00:08:19][123.3]

Jameela: [00:08:20] When was this breakdown? Because we’ve known each other all this time, but I wasn’t aware that this happened. [00:08:26][6.1]

Poppy: [00:08:28] So it was, I was must have been like twenty six and it just started this idea for Happy Not Perfect. I was hosting this show on Snapchat. We had thousands and millions of people watching and it was the first time where I realized that more people than I were also going, oh my God, I’m so worried about the future and oh my God, I’m so stressed out about this. I’m so stressed out about that. And that was the moment when I started realizing that I wanted to work in mental health. And this idea of how do I put my mom, who’s a psychotherapist, who has these tools that I can call her up on and tell, you know, how do I relax right now? What on earth do I do with this? How do I how do I turn this into something that more people can access? Because therapy is expensive. And and to be honest, the conversations that you have are so therapeutic. Even just having the conversation to realize that we’re all experiencing this is like very reassuring. And and at the time, I would have this thought, but I was traveling between the UK and and the US. I wasn’t sleeping and I had started working with business partners that I felt just like hated me. So I was in this work environment where I felt like I was so despised and it brought up my worst core toxic fears of I’m not enough, I’m not likable. I’ve got to work harder to prove myself. And I ended up my I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic because I learned that the age of 13 and and in the book I write a lot about the the beliefs that we absorb it when we were little, the rule book that we learned from those around us. It may have been our parents, it may have been our friends, it may have just been the environments then become the story we live out for life if we don’t challenge them. And I was living the story of I must work harder, I’m not enough, I must go to everything I had. I was the biggest people pleaser. So if somebody asked me to do something. Yes, yeah, absolutely no problem. I hated saying no, I hated conflict and it one day I woke up and my tummy was so bloated it was rock solid. My my whole my glands had swollen to the point where it was I couldn’t even swallow. And I was in L.A. all by myself and I thought, oh my God, oh my God, and I went to hospital and they just. And they did all their tests and they were like, you’re chronically exhausted and this is your immune system flaring up and you need to rest. And I was like, that’s not a big enough diagnosis, tell me, tell me I’ve got something more. Tell me, tell me. I’ve got something more. You’ve got to give me a a harder diagnosis than that, because I was in so much mental and physical pain and I didn’t realize our stress response was so toxic for the body. I had no idea that when we’re stressed, we release cortisol and enflames our body and and we can’t even think straight when we’re in that moment. And I remember, like weeks later, the smell of coffee. I couldn’t even go near and coffee was like my all time favorite it’s like my best friend. And I couldn’t have a sip of coffee because I couldn’t spike my adrenaline anymore. I was that burnt out and it took me honestly, like it sounds terrible. Probably took me over a year and a half to recover. [00:12:05][216.6]

Jameela: [00:12:06] I mean, it doesn’t sound terrible in any judgment way it just sounds like you had a really fucking terrible time. I mean, I knew you were going through a lot, but I had no idea that it was this bad. But again, I guess at that point, we didn’t really know each other well enough to tell each other the full truth of how we were both feeling. So I was also twenty six when I went through a nervous breakdown. And no, you didn’t know at the time when I was. It’s so funny and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to be more there for you. I had no idea. [00:12:31][25.6]

Poppy: [00:12:33] I think that’s the and that’s why the world has changed so much, because we were just on the phone being like, I’m going through this, I’m going through this. [00:12:40][6.7]

Jameela: [00:12:40] Exactly. Yeah. [00:12:41][0.8]

Poppy: [00:12:43] And and I have to say, you really appreciate the friends that you can be, you know, and and that’s really kind of, I guess the main message and the main learning I’ve had is how do we live our most authentic truth? Because when we sit down, you know, even with just a stranger or a really good friend, when someone’s willing just to say, oh, this is me, it is so reassuring. And that is what I appreciate about friendship so much because I feel like I’m going through this and you’re like, I’ve actually gone through that, Pops. And you may go through this and it’s OK because, you know, it’s actually not as bad as you think. [00:13:19][36.0]

Jameela: [00:13:19] That’s also one of my favorite things to do because you’re younger than me. So it’s one of my favorite things to do is to tell you all of the terrible shit mistakes I made to either make you feel better about yours or to stop you from making the same mistakes I’ve made. And so I guess that takes us to Happy Not Perfect, which starts to grow on social media and then became widely loved app. I have the app. I listen to your podcast. It’s excellent. And now you have a book coming out where you have taken all of these life lessons. Where you’ve even included your childhood diary entries, which is such a brave and vulnerable thing to do up. My childhood diary entries was so disturbing that I literally burned them eight years ago. I was like, no one can ever find this. No one can ever know. This is I never want to see this again. Oh, this is just I was such a twisted child. But you you’ve created this book that documents your kind of journey through understanding neurology and something that I think is so interesting. And this has been like a part of my experience of you. That has just been so fruitful and mind blowing is your dedication to understanding the actual function of the brain, not just the emotional language, not just the emotional tools, but part of your recovery has been actually understanding what our brains are doing, what our brains are built to do, what our survival mechanisms are, and really getting into the weeds of neuroscience. It’s been like watching you. I mean, watching everyone you’ve interviewed, all of the places you’ve gone and spoken, all of the things that you have done. It has been like watching you do essentially a PhD. In your very own PHD of neuroscience and psychology, so fascinating, [00:15:03][104.2]

Poppy: [00:15:05] I honestly think the root of all change is education. And when I was lying in bed, unable to move, I thought, I’ve got to understand what’s happening because our bodies are bloody brilliant and our brains are brilliant, too. The problem is, is that we are living lifestyles that are not conducive to healthy bodies and brains. And suddenly when you understand what is going on, you go, oh my God, of course. Of course it happened to me then. Of course, I was feeling anxious. It’s so normal. My brain was actually working. It was work. It was doing what it’s supposed to be doing. The problem is that actually maybe I need to change my external environment. And this idea, the brain has got kind of three inputs like bottom up. You’ve got obviously genes and then you’ve got nutrition. You’ve got top down when you know your thoughts and your thought health and how you can regulate emotions. And then you have external inputs and, you know, are you in a safe environment, what’s going on? If, for example, you’ve just recently gone through a breakup, of course, you are going to be going through the wringer and suddenly to understand that your brain is this melting pot of all of these different inputs, you are able to develop so much more compassion for yourself. And for me, it was like the complete change of my life from not knowing how my biology worked and then suddenly starting to learn piece by piece. And it’s taken me literally six years to get to this point where, you know, I felt ready to combine all the research, all the incredible experts and go ok for anybody who doesn’t have six years and just wants it, you know, in in a few hours. How do I just create this one book that has all the learnings and I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried everything to try and work out what was really, really going to fundamentally, fundamentally make a big shift, because we can all talk about how amazing meditation is that for me, it was impossible to sit down to do a meditation practice every day. And actually, for people who don’t kind of resonate with that kind of sitting still mindfulness, surely there must be other things out there. And that was really the mission was to go and understand my brain in a different way. [00:17:28][143.1]

Jameela: [00:17:28] Thank God you said that because I really can’t meditate for shit. I really can’t not for shit or fuck. I cannot do it. I’ve tried. I listen to the apps, I, I find the sleep meditations. I, my brain will not stop. And so I’m so excited to dig into the tools that you have learned over the course of your recovery essentially, I think we’ll call it. You seem in a much more recovered place. Talk to me about one of your favorite things that you learned throughout your process. I mean, one of my favorite things that you talk to me about, which is the fact that the brain, the brain kind of has two radio stations. You break it down to Calm FM and Stressed FM. Talk to me about that. [00:18:07][38.4]

Poppy: [00:18:07] Yes. So this was really inspired by Dr Rick Hansen, who has a book called Hardwiring Happiness. And he talks about how the brain only really has two settings. And I was like, oh, my God, this makes so much sense. The brain only has two radio stations. Either we are playing stressed FM, which is like rahhhh or playing Chilled FM, when suddenly we can make good decisions, we’re able to process our emotions. We’re feeling good. We can go to sleep. We’re digesting well and stressed FM is us feeling chaotic, usually like we’re supposed to have a bit of both. You know, stress is not all bad. Some stress is good. It kind of gets our adrenaline moving. It gives us some energy. Some stress is good. But the problem is, is that we’re now spending ninety eight percent of our days on stressed FM feeling totally chaotic. And as a consequence, we are in reaction mode. We’re in defensive mode. When we’re in defensive and reaction mode, we don’t make good decisions. We make decisions based on past patterns because that is how the brain formulates the present. The brain goes into a situation goes, oh my God, have I seen this before, have I seen this? Have I seen the before? And then it goes, oh yes. I think I have seen it before, seven years ago. And this is what happened. It was dangerous. Oh my God. We should feel anxious right now. And suddenly we are you know our stressed FM is blurring all sort of clarity in the present moment. Suddenly when we are in relaxed FM, the you know, the parasympathetic nervous system for any scientists out there. [00:19:40][92.8]

Jameela: [00:19:41] Break it down, though, for the for the people like me who didn’t go to school after they were sixteen, what is a parasympathetic [00:19:45][4.3]

Poppy: [00:19:46] So Stressed FM is the sympathetic nervous system. It’s the fight and flight mode. And we all know that it’s when our cortisol is pumping is when we’re in that fight flight or freeze state. And we are trying to make really quick reactions because go back to caveman times, this is really helpful. If we saw something on the floor and it looked like a snake, we wanted to be reacting very quickly. We didn’t want to have that rational part of our brain go I think it’s the stick or could be a snake. A stick a snake, because by that point, snake would have bitten us and we would have died maybe. But when we’re in the relaxed and relaxed fm, we are able to say we are able to stay curious is that stick? I think it’s a stick. It’s OK, I’m safe. No need to be worried. But the problem is, is that we have psychological threats now. So we receive an email and it’s like, oh, my God, she didn’t she didn’t sign it off, like, you know, nice to chat. She hated me. She hated me. And our stressed state just causes our brain to create narratives that are spinning us into circles that are not helpful for us. And so when we’re in that mode, if you ask yourself question what radio station are we playing, it’s such an easy question just to go, how do I feel? It’s quite easy to tell what radio station you’re playing is my heart beating is my is on my shoulders tense or am I is my shoulders relax. Am I feeling safe. How does my tummy feel. Is it relaxed? And then we start to know are we in a good state to be making a decision right now. [00:21:18][91.8]

Jameela: [00:21:20] That’s great. That’s so interesting. I feel like I’ve been in stressed fm for about thirty five years. I really need to change the bloody radio station. And so, OK, so let’s say I’m me, which I am and I’m in stressed FM, which I was in yesterday. What could I have done to switch over to calm fm? [00:21:42][21.8]

Poppy: [00:21:44] Great question. So this is step one of the facts, which is connection. Usually when we’re stressed, we have learned that uncomfortable emotions should be not felt. And so we often then can resort to numbing behavior. So we go on social media or we go online shopping or we go head down into work just to go. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t know if this is too much to feel. I don’t feel this. But again, the problem is we just then kind of prolong stress, stressed state. How to switch it back it’s just to, first of all, acknowledge to accept whatever you’re feeling, because that is totally fine. You take away the judgment and you go, OK, my today my mind feels and you label that feeling and this the diffusion technique. And a lot of people may have learned this in acceptance, commitment therapy. And by doing that, you say my mind today. My mind feels today you’re reminding yourself emotions are always temporary. [00:22:43][58.9]

Jameela: [00:22:43] OK, I’m going to do it. So my mind feels like a dumpster fire. Does that work as an answer? [00:22:49][5.3]

Poppy: [00:22:49] Today. [00:22:49][0.0]

Jameela: [00:22:49] Today, today, today. So it’s important to say today is that you don’t put a permanence on the feeling, OK, today or right now, my mind feels like a dumpster fire toilet. [00:23:00][11.0]

Poppy: [00:23:01] Great. [00:23:01][0.0]

Jameela: [00:23:02] Great. [00:23:02][0.0]

Poppy: [00:23:03] And so you go my mind. Suddenly you are, then you are disassociating yourself. You are not your emotion. Your mind today feels like a dumpster fire. So, your. [00:23:15][12.3]

Jameela: [00:23:16] Toilet. [00:23:16][0.0]

Poppy: [00:23:17] Toilet. So you’re able to have this like slight separation. And then you think to yourself, where am I feeling it? Where am I? Where are you feeling that dumpster fire toilet. A feeling in your body, Jameela? [00:23:28][10.5]

Jameela: [00:23:29] OK, I’m feeling it in my stomach mostly. That’s normally where I feel most of my tension. My brain is quite numb because I think I might be neurologically damaged from too much stress as a child. So I don’t often feel stress that I can recognize in my brain. And I think a lot of people are like this. I am I’m one of many people who has who pushes all of their feelings down into their body. So mind will come out and kidney stones or digestive issues or aches and pains. I store all of my grief in my body and my eating disorder habits, especially when I overeat or used to anyway were because I was trying to physically push feelings down with food, like down from my throat, away from my head, down into my body, so that my stomach ache would externally reveal the internal turmoil, turmoil that I was in. Does that make sense? [00:24:27][57.6]

Poppy: [00:24:28] Oh that makes complete sense, because when we’re feeling stressed, why would the body start digesting if we were running away from a lion? So so it just so digestion stops when you’re feeling stressed. And that’s why when I had my complete breakdown, I was bloated for months. I just didn’t go to the bathroom. I mean, probably too much information. I was deeply constipated. [00:24:50][21.8]

Jameela: [00:24:51] That’s fine that what’s happened to us all. So I’m I’m certain I didn’t shit between the age of twenty four and twenty seven. So. So not once. Not one time. [00:24:58][6.9]

Poppy: [00:24:58] Oh. So this is how we’re going to change it. So I want you to they’re called micro flexes in the book. Relax your shoulders down, OK. And I won’t need to place your hands on your belly and breathe into the belly is if you’re expanding the belly so much and push that belly out, get that gut out expanded. And now exhale slowly, barely releases towards the spine. Now let’s do that again, let’s inhale into the belly with our shoulders down, expanding the belly, fill that belly up or with air relaxing air. Hold it for a moment for as long as you can and exhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale out and continue breathing just gently. Now by breathing into the belly, we activate our vagus nerve we start telling our brain. [00:25:47][48.6]

Jameela: [00:25:47] What’s the vagus nerve wait what’s the vagus nerve. [00:25:50][2.5]

Poppy: [00:25:51] Vagus nerve is connected from our gut into our brain. It’s one of the most important signals that that is attached to our nervous system as part of our nervous system. And it controls whether we’re in the fight or flight, whether we’re playing stressed fm or chilled fm. So when we are feeling stressed, if you just go back to the breath and it feels so simple, oh my God, we all breath we all breathe. But nine out of 10 people breathe into their chest the entire time with their shoulders tensed. And if we just consciously relax our shoulders down, we’re using biochemical signals. We’re using our body to tell our brain that we are safe because if we’re breathing into the belly, clearly there’s no lion about to attack us because our bodies say no, no brain was safe, otherwise we wouldn’t be barely breathing. If you look at how a baby breathes, they breathe into their belly. And then at the age of five years old, they go to school and we get hunched over desks. We may get punched in the the tummy or as women were told to suck in and our breath travels up to our chest hiking up that part, that sympathetic, nervous state the entire time, stressed fm. So we’re breathing to our chest our body saying to our brain. I’m stressed, I’m stressed, I’m stressed. [00:27:01][70.5]

Jameela: [00:27:02] That is fascinating. It breaks down. It’s such a it’s such a simple thing to learn. And and I only came across this sort of information, I think probably via you a couple of years ago. And whenever I realize I’m in that state, I always find it so hilarious as to how how simple human beings are and how how unprepared and undesigned, we are for the modern world, especially the age of social media, because, you know, you were talking about the fact that when stressed FM is playing, that’s when you shouldn’t make decisions, right? [00:27:36][33.4]

Poppy: [00:27:36] Yes. [00:27:36][0.0]

Jameela: [00:27:37] Social media, especially when you’re on the receiving end of of of trolling or maybe you’re watching someone else being trolled or maybe you’re watching the news cycle and it’s fucking stressful, especially as it has been in the last year and a half, but also just forever for the last 11 years. We have the same response to the response we would have had back in the day. As you were saying, like from a pissy email even can send us trigger us into that fight or flight response. I, I laugh so much at the idea that when I’ve been on the receiving end of trolling or demands or like true audacity online, those have been the times where I’ve been like, I should tweet something publicly that’ll be screen-grabbed and kept forever. This is a great time for me to post my opinion on this huge subject or on this deeply personal subject. I, I can’t believe that that’s when I’ve made that decision. And almost all of the time I spend on social media, I must be on stressed fm because it’s so fucking stressful. And so why we ever post anything is beyond me, considering how terrifying that space is and how triggered into like old cavemen fight or flight space we are. [00:28:47][70.1]

Poppy: [00:28:47] Right because your human your basic human needs. Am I loved. Am I safe? Am I enough? are being challenged when you’re online because suddenly someone sends you a mean comment and that is like the tribe going, oh, you well you’re not accepted anymore. And so it’s our survival mechanism being like it’s it’s so difficult to wean ourselves off not being affected by other people’s opinions and comments, even though we know they’re trolls, even though we know bullies are bullies, their words and everybody should be so much more aware of the impact of their words on another person. We are living in a world where we are emotions are contagious. Our words are very powerful because they it is our brain reacts in the same way as it would to someone sending you a bow and arrow. [00:29:41][54.4]

Jameela: [00:29:42] Yeah. And the the reason the tribal thing makes us so reactive and often act in terror or make decisions that maybe aren’t even really integral to self for our beliefs is because if you feel as though you’re being kicked out of the tribe, the I’m going to use the term cave man or whatever, the part of your brain that is activated is. If I’m separated from the tribe, then I’m in danger. That being in a tribe, being in a group, being in a collective keeps me safe. And if I am authorized, if I’m out here on my own, then I have to fend for myself effectively in what is the wild. And even though we now have doors and civilization, quote unquote, and windows and locks and and, you know, we’re no longer constantly under threat, depending on where we live from wild animals, we still have the feeling that we are because our brains haven’t updated to this technological boom. [00:30:35][53.0]

Poppy: [00:30:36] They haven’t updated. I always say, you know, the human ability to create is so much faster than the human ability to adapt. So we’ve created this incredibly fast world and we are running on our default settings. We spend 90 percent of our day in autopilot mode, information theory found. Researchers found that the brain that the body sends the brain 11 million pieces of information a second and our conscious brain can only process 50 so we’re overwhelmed. Of course we’re overwhelmed. And also like technology, they say nobody can multitask. But women, men like any identity, any gender you identify with, like no one can no one can multitask. What we do is you multi switch. So when you’re working and suddenly you get a WhatsApp notification or you get something else in education and you switch attention, what you’re doing is you’re just degrading your ability to concentrate on either task. And so we’re constantly being being unable to allowed to really fully dive into a book or a piece of work because we’ve always been distracted, distracted, and that is really overwhelming for the brain. The brain really hasn’t changed much over thousands of years, but yet our world has. And so this is why I let part of the book in the strapline is Upgrade Your Mind, because it is a daily practice to upgrade our mindset. And that’s why one of the biggest points of the book I talk about is we’ve got to live a life of flexible thinking, including flexible thinking in the way that we approach life. And part of being a flexible thinker is being deeply curious, having the time to question actually like, is this true? Is this thought I’m having true? I’m online. Someone sent me a horrible comment. And before we react, we ask, is this true? Can I be 100 percent sure this is true? [00:32:31][114.6]

Jameela: [00:32:32] And does this impact my life? And does this make me unsafe? Because even if it is true, does it actually impact your day, your life, your existence, whether you are worthy of love, whether you’re going to be OK, whether you’re going to survive, because it’s our actual survival skills that get called into question. Sometimes when we receive negativity online, we think, oh, this is the end of the world. This is legitimately the end of the world is why we focus always on the negative comments rather than the thousands of positive comments or the negative thing that’s happened in the day rather than the many positive and safe, wonderful, perhaps like mundane parts of our day, right? [00:33:11][39.3]

Poppy: [00:33:12] Yes, we have an 80 percent negative bias because, again, the brain was developed to predict and protect. And so, of course, we have this, like, natural inclination to remember every single negative comment that’s ever been said to us and forget the positive ones, because that wasn’t going to help us survive. And also, we have a thing called confirmation bias in which we like to confirm our beliefs. We like to confirm how we see the world. So, for example, the reason why I included my diary entries in the book is to show people the beliefs that you absorbed were instilled in you at the age of 12, can continue running your life and your brain wants to confirm those beliefs over and over again. So at 12, you believed you weren’t enough. You were going to find you’re going to find evidence across your entire life to confirm or I know I’m not enough. Look, that’s more evidence that I’m not enough. And so we have to challenge we’ve got to get so curious, like the other beliefs I hold even true. Are they serving me? Because what was what was true when you were 12 is definitely not true now. And it was probably not true when you were 12 either. [00:34:19][66.3]

Jameela: [00:34:19] I know. I know. [00:34:20][0.8]

Jameela: [00:34:28] Talk to me about stiff thinkers and flexible thinkers, you were talking briefly on flexible thinking. [00:34:33][4.9]

Poppy: [00:34:34] Well, stiff thinking is is a habit all human beings have because of just what we’ve covered. We’re stuck in default mode. We’re stuck with this negative bias with our confirmation bias stuck in our stressed fm. And as a consequence, we are like we believe everything we think. And we if somebody doesn’t agree with us, then they’re wrong because we can’t understand that a different world from how we are seeing it from within. [00:35:07][32.3]

Jameela: [00:35:08] Is an example of this something like in my twenties, I had severe social anxiety and also like at school, I had severe social anxiety and was really badly bullied. So my belief system was I’m never really going to be good at making friends. I’m never going to have friends. I’m always going to be alone. And then later realize when I have anxiety and my anxiety is what pushes people away and also stops me from even opening myself up to other people. So that’s me moving from being a stiff thinker who spent 20 years thinking, I’m never going to have friends into being a flexible thinker, who just realizes some people you have chemistry with, some people you don’t. And some of this is just anxiety. [00:35:47][38.9]

Poppy: [00:35:48] Yes. Yes. That is like the most perfect example. And, you know, my mom being a psychotherapist, you know, she sees clients who are in their 70s and 80s and it nearly makes me break down into tears, hearing stories of people in their 80s, finally, that accepting that actually they’re not stupid and people love them. And they spent 80 years of their life stuck in stiff thoughts of what happened when they were eight. This one man in particular, when he was eight, the whole class started and he said he couldn’t spell his name correctly. So the whole class stood up, said, you’re so stupid, you’re so stupid. And he spent his entire life believing he was stupid. And and it just it makes me sick. But it just made me burst into tears when she was telling me the story because, you know, we have science and this is one, I think the things that really like just got me totally hooked on understanding like the brain’s neurology. Science has proven that we have this thing called neuroplasticity, that our brain is malleable. And and I and and so science has proven we can change our brain, we can change our outlook. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy because when we believe something about ourselves our bitchy inner critic, which I like to call mine a name and I call mine Regina after the mean girl in Mean Girls. And I’m like, Regina can be vicious. And there’s some times when we’re feeling anxious that inner critic has louder and louder and louder and louder and it’s really difficult to go. I know that’s not true. I can be flexible right now. I can sit here and be in that emotion, but stay curious at the same time and so flexible thinking is about curiosity, choice and commitment. And curiosity my greatest inspiration for this was Byron Katie. And she has these four questions that that I learned from her. So, for example, the thought that, like, you know, I’m never I’m everyone hates me. Is this true? And we’re like, well, I think it is true. Everyone hates me. Can I be a hundred percent sure this is true, that I’m just like, well, no, I can’t look into their mind. So we don’t know. How does this thought make me feel? Well, awful unconfident just just the worst. I don’t want to go out again, like, oh, I’m just going to stay at home because that’s where I belong. Who would I be without the thought, like open to opportunities, having experiences, learning, growing. And we realized through curiosity that so much of our suffering is within our thoughts that are often not true. And then we move on to choice. And the reason why I included choice in this flex method to help us move from stiff thinking to flexible thinking is because our brain again, it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s been working in a certain way for so many years. So if we want to change it in any way for it to be kinder to ourselves, we have to have a make a conscious choice to and we’ve got to make a conscious choice to choose compassion, because at the root of every human, we only have two emotions, love and fear. And every thought is either coming from fear or stepping into love. And so when we ask questions like how would I advise a friend experiencing what I am now, what would I tell a friend experiencing what I am now? Not only do we start actually activating the wise part of our brain to tap into our wisdom, because we can only be in our wisdom when we’re all relaxed fm. When we’re on stressed fm we are working from fear and we can’t access the buckets of wisdom we all have. So choosing to be compassionate is the greatest choice we all have, and it takes work, and sometimes it takes us to ask that question over and over again, how would I how would I advise a friend? What would I tell a friend? [00:39:37][229.5]

Jameela: [00:39:38] Yeah, I talk about this a lot when it comes to body image that I have to I’ve had to learn how to be my own best friend. Where would I ever tell a friend that they don’t look good enough to go up for that job or they are too fat or old to be loved or they are not worthy of being accepted in society because they haven’t met a certain, like, ridiculous, unrealistic societal ideal? No, I would never I would never say these things to anyone. I have so much love and respect for other human beings, even ones that I don’t know, so much more love and respect than I have had for myself in the past. And so I’ve had to learn to be my own just to have my own inner Beyonce. So obviously, Beyonce is my best friend. I don’t really know her, but, you know, but I’ve had to learn how to to to to cheer myself on the way that I would cheer you on or someone else. So all I do is encourage other women all the time. And yet it’s been so hard to learn how to how to muster that up for myself. And now that I’ve learned how to, it has helped me just become so and so much bolder, even when maybe I shouldn’t. I try. And it’s interesting, like, you know, I’ve been thinking about this so much lately, the way that we discourage each other. In particular, we discourage women, we discourage women. But we are a generation, especially like lately in the last couple of years, I feel as though we’ve entered a period of of of encouraging stiff thinking of telling people who they are. It’s like, oh, you’ve made that mistake. This is who you are. This is who you will always be. There’s no point bothering to change because we’re never going to believe that you’re going to change. And and we’ve we’re writing you off because of that mistake. I’ve made mistakes. I have I have misrepresented myself. I fucked something up or I’ve been bad. Anything on camera, on the radio. And I have been told by hundreds of thousands of people before, like just kill yourself or you’re worthless or you’re annoying and you will always be annoying. You should never do this again. You should leave social media. You shouldn’t bother to come back and try and do better, or you’re only trying because you want to be accepted now. So therefore there’s no value when you’re trying. All I get is discouragement, discouragement, discouragement, discouragement. And part of my journey, and I think it’s yours as well, has just been to push through that discouragement and be like, you don’t get to tell me whether or not I’m capable of change, whether or not I can improve, whether or not it’s worth my time to try to become a better person or a smart person. This whole podcast is just an experiment in seeing like, how much can I learn from these excellent people, people like you and how much can I grow? And people online don’t get to tell us that. I’ve got to tell you, whoever you are listening to this right now, who maybe didn’t say the right thing politically or whatever, uh, maybe ten years ago you said the wrong thing. No one gets to tell you that it’s too late for you to change. And you bringing up this you know, this devastating story, this eighty year old just shows that, like your you can become a flexible thinker even at 80, that you you never have to write yourself off as I am beyond hope. [00:43:03][205.0]

Poppy: [00:43:04] Absolutely. Like forgiveness and compassion are two of the most important things for us to remember as human beings, because without forgiveness and forgiveness of ourselves, we stay in really low vibrational energies. And also, if someone’s unable to forgive you, it means they’re unable to forgive themselves. And that is actually so sad. And this guy called Hawkins did this scale of consciousness and he actually documented that every emotion has a different emotional frequency. And so shame, regret, guilt, fear, all of the emotions that we feel are really low vibration, acceptance, compassion, joy, a higher vibrational. [00:43:52][47.1]

Jameela: [00:43:53] What does that mean when people say vibrational? I’ve never understood this. [00:43:56][3.0]

Poppy: [00:43:57] Well, it just goes back to everything is made up of energy. Right. We’re just all just atoms vibrating and you know it. You know, you’re something brilliant has happened and you’re just bouncing off the ceiling and you just go to meet your friend and she thinks brilliance happened to her. And she is like, wow, wow, wow, wow. And you leave. [00:44:15][17.9]

Jameela: [00:44:16] I feel like we had a conversation like that yesterday over the phone. Where like, I felt I felt like I could achieve anything after getting off the phone with you because we were just, like, excited and. And loving each other and encouraging each other and and making exciting plans and considering that the world is our oyster for a moment and I felt so wonderful for hours and hours and hours. So that’s my that’s my higher vibration. That’s my higher energy. [00:44:45][29.3]

Poppy: [00:44:47] Yeah because it was joyful. We were connecting. We were excited and and I did. Me, too. I was like shaking for an hour afterwards, like little I couldn’t even sit down. And, you know, for us to be in those higher vibrational states, like, we’ve got to forgive, we’ve got to forgive the shame that we all carry. We all carry regret. We all carry embarrassment. All of us have done it we’re imperfect. What is so you know, and this is why you’re such a glorious leader. We’re so lucky to have individuals like you in society because you allow us all to forgive ourselves because you’re saying, look, I fucked up guys and I’m going to stop. By the way, you haven’t fucked up. But, you know, if you think you have the fact that you’re so vocal about even thinking of yourself, this is the whole thing with all of us, all the things that, you know, let’s say everyone listening here. So we all in a room sharing the things we think we fucked up on, all of us would be like, babe, that’s not a fuck up, you know. [00:45:49][62.1]

Jameela: [00:45:49] I know. I know, I know. But yeah, but some some of us get in particular, I think women and women of color. But then add to that being a public figure, you get held to really impossible standards. And so. I just want to show people like, hey, look, I used to be a slut shaming sexist prick 10 years ago, maybe less, maybe eight years ago, God who didn’t know the term patriarchy. And now I’m like a fairly reasonable, kind, loving woman promoting feminist who understands the correct terminology. And now I’m putting most of the money I make into raising other women or other people who are marginalized online. So I’ve gone from being a legitimate bad guy, bad person who says bad, negative things to people publicly, to now becoming a much more decent and integral, more informed person, if I can do it. Old me, you know, mistakes.dotcom, if I can do it, anyone can do it. And that’s the thing that I most want people to realize I want to encourage. I’m not interested in discouragement. It doesn’t achieve truly anything. [00:46:59][70.1]

Poppy: [00:47:00] And we’re also very, very uncreative. The fact is, we’ve got a lot of world problems and I truly believe our creativity and the human genius, we will create solutions to the problem that if we’re creating a society that everybody is so terrified about making a mistake, large or small, like in public or even just in the workplace or even at home, we are not growing. And the brain, when we are uncomfortable, when we’re making mistakes, it actually loves it because it’s creating new neural pathways. And so learning and making mistakes is how we grow. And we wouldn’t be living in this like evolved society with this incredible technology if we didn’t make a few mistakes along the way, because then we learn how to do it better. [00:47:43][43.1]

Jameela: [00:47:44] We had Dr. Deepak Chopra on this podcast talking to me about the fact that the way that we learn the best and most effectively is when we make a mistake. That’s actually when our brain can process and maintain the information in the sharpest, most helpful, effective way is from our mistakes. And mistakes are kind of vital in order for us to learn or definitely don’t do that again because it makes a bigger impact on us. [00:48:07][23.1]

Poppy: [00:48:08] And also when we’re frustrated, because if you’ve ever learn a musical instrument, it’s when you start getting really, really frustrated and you’re like, I just can’t get it. If you try to learn like a sport or when is any new skill you’re trying to learn or the language, you start getting very, very frustrated. And that is when, you know, the brain is in an accelerated learning time is when you get frustrated. So I think sometimes we we always assume that, like, again, we we we kind of put happiness in this premium emotion that we should always be feeling. But actually, frustration is a really, really helpful emotion, because that’s when we our brain is trying to work problems out. And often when you are in a growth period in life, it feels deeply challenging. And we then misinterpret that signal as, oh, it’s wrong this is not this I’m not right for this. Let’s you start a new job. And it’s like really frustrating and and and difficult. Actually, you you’re exactly what you should be because, you know, that frustration is like growth. [00:49:01][53.6]

Jameela: [00:49:03] Mm hmm. Yes. Within reason, if you’re really, really uncomfortable and you really hate it, then you should leave then then then maybe that will be your form of growth just to just to make sure I caveat always with that. [00:49:14][11.1]

Poppy: [00:49:14] I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean quitting is one of the strongest things that you can do because often we’re like conditioned like never to quit. I definitely think I wish I had quit things and. [00:49:25][10.8]

Jameela: [00:49:26] Oh my God. Me too. Oh my God. That that, that, that, that idea that quitting is failure and actually it’s self-preservation. I mean, the idea that self-preservation was a dirty word until like three years ago and selfishness is a dirty word when I’m really just starting to willfully try to embrace selfishness as something that is a good thing, a huge luxury and one that I shouldn’t shun when I have the opportunity to be selfish. Like, for example, I don’t have lots of children who are depending on me right now in my household. I can sleep in on the weekend. Like, how can I how can I disregard the luxury of the space to be selfish and not just take some time out for myself? Who who wins if I just burn myself out? [00:50:08][42.0]

Poppy: [00:50:09] I mean, absolutely, I think you touched upon a really important point in this whole conversation around mental health, which is there is like one size that does not fit like one size does not fit all. Like fundamentally, everybody is is their own expert. Everybody knows themselves the best. And I think we do sometimes come to a culture of like, oh, I need to ask so many other people to understand what I’m feeling inside. And actually, you know, is, as you just said, actually, no, I need to self preservation. I did not need to push myself into harder environments. And I think that’s a really, really powerful point because, you know, someone everyone can say different things, but really, you know, you yourself are your greatest, like, wise teacher. [00:51:00][51.4]

Jameela: [00:51:01] Yeah, I love a good fuck it bucket. I like to just chuck it all in the fuck it bucket. That’s really honestly just been my route to recovery. You start your book with a chapter called Fuck My Life? [00:51:12][10.7]

Poppy: [00:51:14] Yeah. [00:51:14][0.0]

Jameela: [00:51:15] Which I think is extremely, extremely inspiring and cool and very personal. I mean, this is a very personal pursuit that you’re putting a lot of yourself out there. And I think that it’s incredibly brave and inspiring. I feel like I don’t mean it in a patronizing way, but I feel very, very proud to watch you embrace this and to become just increasingly authentic and vulnerable, even on such a public level over the course of my life. Because honestly, you were just so people pleasing when we were younger. So was I. Maybe that’s why we didn’t become closer until we were older, until we became our authentic selves, you know what I mean? We will see each other around, but maybe are like heightened hyper people pleasing kind of facade. You you taught me this terminology called Duck Syndrome that I think we were both so guilty of. And maybe I still sometimes, but I feel like it may be like repelled us away from each other, but maybe it got in the way of us becoming as close as we now are. And I fucking adore you, but I’m so happy to have you in my life. But would you please explain what Duck Syndrome is? [00:52:23][68.8]

Poppy: [00:52:25] Oh, yeah. I’m such a corporal of Duck Syndrome. Well, I was. In duck syndrome is basically living life like a duck. When you’re trying to look so graceful, you’ve got it all together, which I feel kind of like Instagram is for many people. This is such an experience, in duck syndrome where you’re like, look, here’s my life and I’ve got this and I’ve got this. And underneath it, underneath the surface, you are paddling for dear life. And this is really what kind of culminated in my total, like chronic exhaustion, because I was just so desperate to try and look to everyone else that I had life together and underneath I was literally like, oh, my God, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And and then it all fell apart and and and you can witness all the you know, and it’s funny, you know, they always say life like hits you with three busses at the same time, you know, one thing goes wrong and it’s like bash and then I guess another bash and you’re just kind of like on the floor. But like one of the greatest. She was a great friend to me and alleged that like an old sister and she was a yogi. And she said, Poppy never waste a breakdown. They often our most transformative moments because they’re moments of change when we realize that we cannot keep going with these old habits, these toxic old habits that are so ingrained into us. And it’s probably the best thing she could have ever told me because it was almost it gave me permission to almost kind of go, OK, OK, I, I’m, I, I can’t go on like this. [00:53:58][93.1]

Jameela: [00:53:58] I accept change. [00:53:59][0.7]

Poppy: [00:54:00] I accept change. [00:54:00][0.6]

Jameela: [00:54:01] That’s fucking great. Never waste a break down. That’s such an empowering way of looking at it. I wish someone had said that to me during mine so that wouldn’t have taken me so many years to put mine to use, but I think I didn’t waste mine in the end. I think it’s everything that I Weigh is and everything that I feel and how I live my life now is all of the response to that breakdown. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was also just very expensive and stressful at the time. [00:54:32][31.0]

Poppy: [00:54:33] Right, right. But you wouldn’t you wouldn’t take it back [00:54:36][3.4]

Jameela: [00:54:37] 100 percent I would definitely not take it back. I was on the worst possible path. The thing I want to know from you now, as as I lose you to your busy life as a mental health leader, is what are the therapies that you recommend to these people? Because we’ve kind of covered the the abandoning of shame and recognizing that your brain is just doing whatever it’s going to do to try and keep you alive the best way it knows how and understanding what you’re doing, checking in with yourself, seeing where you’re at and and starting to try and not manipulate, but maneuver yourself into a more friendly and and healthy and safe space emotionally, internally and maybe even externally in your life. We’ve covered those things. What are some of the therapies that you would recommend to the people who find like, fuck I feel like I have stressed FM on all of the time. I don’t really know how to make that transition because it sounds so easy to make that transition. And and you’ve definitely laid out so many of the the ways in which to do that just in this podcast alone. But what are some of the practical things that someone like me or someone like our listeners what are the steps that we can take in order to actively create long lasting change? [00:55:59][82.0]

Poppy: [00:56:02] So I obviously am a huge advocate of therapy because my mother is one and I’ve gone through years of therapy myself and I’ve tried so many different ones. And what I would try to encourage people is it I actually love therapy. I actually find it really fun because I think the greatest gift we can give ourselves is self-awareness. To understand ourself, like the ancient Greeks said, know thyself. And it was like one of the best things thousands of years ago, they said. And then we kind of forgot ourselves. And now we’re coming back to this point where we’re understanding ourselves and want and this desire to understand, to understand ourselves again. So and also all therapists, it’s like dating a boyfriend, you know, like I’ve heard stories of one of my friends went to a therapist and she really didn’t enjoy the experience. And as a consequence she’s like, it’s not for me. But actually there are so many different. It’s it really is finding that person that can gel with you, that understands you. And and so, for example, my mother does therapy called brain working recursive therapy, BWRT. And I think that is absolutely incredible. It’s a new therapy that has had significant research on it. And it’s it’s it basically rewires your brain at the subconscious level. So you may have probably heard about hypnotherapy, but she’s also an incredible therapy because, again, our subconscious is where are all our memories are stored and our conscious brain is obviously, obviously kind of, you know, all of our thoughts and, you know, actually quite limited as a hypnotherapy can really access that subconscious brain, which is usually the driver for how we think and behave and react. So hypnotherapy I’m a huge fan of I think you understand. I think you find memories that were very formative and actually you can, with your older self, look back on and go, oh, that. Actually, you know what? I didn’t need to feel so scared. At that moment I was I was OK. And there’s a lot of like kind of, you know, using the present to heal the past. And I think that’s wonderful. And then I think you’ve obviously got CBT, which is like which is brilliant, and that’s [00:58:21][139.5]

Jameela: [00:58:21] cognitive behavioral therapy? [00:58:22][1.1]

Poppy: [00:58:23] Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And you can talk about DBT dialect behavioral therapy. [00:58:26][2.5]

Jameela: [00:58:27] I did NDR Eye Movement Desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which I talk about all the time. [00:58:32][4.7]

Poppy: [00:58:33] Exactly. And then, you know, you’ve got like slightly holistic therapies, which, for example, massage. I know this sounds strange, but actually if me, for example, the beginning of the pandemic, I was on my own a lot. And actually we realized that we haven’t been touched and we need oxytocin and the feeling of touch. So if you haven’t been able to hug anyone for ages, you could be like really low on just physical touch. So I think it’s really interesting to, you know, again, look at the mind as I from from the bottom up outside in and the top down. And and there’s all sorts of you know, for you it could be the acupuncture that could be releasing energy from the body because as you said, you know, your issues in your tissues. So I think you use your mental health as well as almost like a constant adventure. It’s not a game that we ever complete. We can’t just suddenly go, boom, my mental health is fixed. Whoo! It is forevermore for the rest of our lives. We are always going to be in different environments, situations, and our brain always needs to be nourished and nurtured and [00:59:43][70.4]

Jameela: [00:59:43] understood [00:59:43][0.0]

Poppy: [00:59:44] and understood and look. And some therapies can be expensive. So there’s always that for anyone on the different price points, there’s lots of different things you can do. This group therapy, which I think is absolutely brilliant. And so go on. Go on a mental health adventure. [01:00:01][16.7]

Jameela: [01:00:03] I think it’s the single best investment you’ll ever make into your life if you have that ability to be able to access that. And also, you know, there have been many times in my life where I couldn’t afford therapy, you know, where you know, there are some countries, though, where you’re not as lucky as we are in the UK, where at least we have it for free on the NHS. But you’re on a waiting list for six months to a year. But in the times when I haven’t been able to access therapy or, for example, in the pandemic, what I went through like a mini nervous breakdown last February, I couldn’t access my therapist because she was just so much more needed by other people. And also we weren’t able to physically be in the same room with each other, friends, friends who actually love you for your whole self. Friends, who actually accept you for who you are and you don’t judge you and trigger you and pick at you. They are the most extraordinary interim on your road to being able to access an actual professional, it doesn’t mean you should necessarily always take their advice. Not everyone should take mine, I’m sure. But I. I just want you to know that even sometimes just hearing your own thoughts out loud, sometimes even just writing it down. I never used to take journalling seriously, but it’s honestly like free therapy in that a big part of the challenge is the fact that we don’t even know what we’re feeling. It’s just these thoughts are bouncing around our head all of the time. And because of the confirmation bias that you were talking about earlier, we’re going. Yes, that’s a perfectly acceptable thought. That is a true thing. And because we don’t hear ourselves say it out loud, away from all of the chaos of our brains, we can’t register what we’ve said and how untrue or problematic or painful or sad that thing is. And so saying out loud to someone that you trust or writing it down, writing down your core beliefs, you talk a lot about this in your book, like core beliefs can help expose to you what you’re really feeling. And even that can can put you towards a path towards change. And I what I love about your book and what I think is so important about your book, Poppy, is the fact that you are giving people that introduction to understanding themselves, to accepting themselves, to living shamelessly. And and I had never looked at mental health as something that was physical. And that was I never took into account neurology the way that I should have when I was younger. I never took into account brain chemicals. I never took into account like ancient patterns of how our brains work to protect us. I had no idea that the brain was only built to predict and protect and that 80 percent of our thoughts were negative, setting us up for so much failure if we don’t go out of our way to make ourselves happy. I’ve learned so much from you. I’m so excited for people to read your book and to listen to your podcast and to follow your work, because in doing so and starting to investigate my brain properly is the organ that it is. I started to treat it the way I would my stomach and my liver and my lungs. I started to care for it in a way that doesn’t just feel ethereal. I think that’s the only word I had right now. But it feels intangible. It feels very like meta and vague the mind. And you found a way to explain it to people in a way that makes it feel like there’s hope for a solution. You’ve made the brain feel practical and and approachable. And for that, I think you’re just the best. So before you leave, would you please tell me, Poppy Jamie, what do you weigh? [01:03:47][224.0]

Poppy: [01:03:48] I weigh. The question always makes me want to cry, doesn’t it? [01:03:55][6.7]

Jameela: [01:03:55] So many people cried during the question, so many people just [01:03:58][3.2]

Poppy: [01:03:59] Um, you know, I weigh being a part um being a sister, being a daughter, being a friend, and and and hopefully being a person that can, you know, help other people find tools through my own journey. So [01:04:23][23.4]

Jameela: [01:04:23] Oh god you’re going to make me cry now Poppy for fucks sake, we’re English. We’re not supposed to do this. This is illegal in England. So you’re definitely someone who helps a lot of people. And you’ve helped and taught me so much. And I love you loads and thank you for giving me so much of your time. You’re so generous. And everyone go out and buy Poppy’s book. [01:04:48][24.7]

Poppy: [01:04:48] Oh, thank you so much. You mean the world to me. And you’re a constant inspiration. And I Weigh has totally changed my understanding of my you know, how I even relate to myself. So thank you so much. [01:05:02][13.7]

Jameela: [01:05:03] Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Aaron Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music that you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. I really appreciate it and amps me up to bring on better and better guess. Lastly, at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at one eight one eight six six zero five five four three or email us what you way at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. It’s not in pounds and kilos. Please don’t send that. It’s all about you just you know, you’ve been on the Instagram anyway and now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners. [01:05:53][50.3]

Listener: [01:05:58] Hi, I’m Sonmez from India, I’m 22 years old. Ever since I was a child, I have had anxiety and my earliest memories of me is feeling completely scared, having really bad stomachaches and just wandering around the school because of unbearable amount of anxiety. But growing up, I realized that I have so much more in me and so much more to offer. I weigh that I am a singer and I love to sing and I love to play the ukulele. I weigh that I’m a teacher of emotions, I did social and emotional learning to 13 beautiful, amazing girls at a juvenile care center in Delhi. I love them and they love me back. And it’s amazing. I weigh that I’m a feminist. I care about equality and I care about equal rights for everyone, all genders. I weigh that I am an empath and I am a great listener. People find me very warm and they are easily able to open up to me. And I love having conversations with different people. I weigh that I’m smart and I’m I’m pretty intelligent and I know it. Yeah. And I weigh that I don’t care about my looks anymore. I look in the mirror and I just see a smart, bright and beautiful person. [01:05:58][0.0]

[3866.5]

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, I hope you’re well, and if you aren’t well, then maybe today’s episode will help because the work of the person I am bringing on today has helped me massively. I have known her for God years and years and years, I think, since she was a teenager and have watched her truly, truly evolve in every way a person can. And I’ve watched her start off as a TV host and somehow find her way to being one of the leading positive voices in mental health care. And she is such a warm, informed, self informed, self educated, unpretentious, excellent, kind human being, someone that I often wish that I was more like. And so I’m thrilled to have her on the podcast today. Her name is Poppy Jamie, if you aren’t already following her on Instagram, you absolutely should because she’s the best. All you will find is positive and uplifting content. We talk so much about the neuroscience behind behind mental health and and our patterns and where they come from and and what our human tendencies are that often we shame ourselves over when we have no choice because certain instincts of ours override the thing that we wish our brain would do. And it’s because of her own journey with mental health and the mental health of family members of hers that she had to work through, that she decided to learn exactly how her brain works, exactly how this computer, this machine inside of her works in order to be able to work out what she can and can’t control. And that’s so empowering. It’s such an empowering and interesting way to approach mental health and something that I’ve never considered. Even though I’d read so much and I’d had so much therapy, I never thought about the basic functions of my brain that I cannot help. And how do I understood those earlier? I would have spent so much less time beating myself up and I would have known how to approach whatever it was that I was feeling better. She has a book coming out called Happy Not Perfect: Upgrade Your Mind, Challenge Your Thoughts and Free Yourself From Anxiety. It’s out on June 8th and she’s just the fucking best. So please enjoy learning so much about your brain from the wonderful Poppy Jamie. Poppy Jamie, I had you on My Ask Jamila Anything podcast, and now you’re here because you blew my mind on that to the point where I was like more people. We need even more people to hear this woman because she’s blowing me away. Welcome to I Weigh. Thank you so much for being here. [00:03:01][181.4]

Poppy: [00:03:02] Thank you so much for having me. [00:03:04][1.8]

Jameela: [00:03:05] I, uh, I have known you since you were 19. So that is since 2009. We’ve known each other from the very beginning of my career because I used to meet you when you were young, budding TV host, and you also worked in a little gift lounge at T4 on the Beach, which is an old TV show that I used to host on a beach in seven different types of weather, all in the same day where you would be sunburned and also hailed at at the same time in gale force winds. And we would do that every single summer. There were fifty thousand people live there on the beach that I would host in front of, as well as live on television, where sometimes it was so windy that the teleprompter would actually blow off the top of the camera off into the sea while I was live on air and I would just freestyle. But that’s where I would meet you backstage as you were becoming a TV host and and entering into this industry. And it’s so nice to see where you’re at now. All these years later, as one of the leading voices online in mental health, [00:04:09][64.3]

Poppy: [00:04:11] it is so crazy that and so beautiful, I think about life, really, that you meet people on your journey and you’ve got no idea how your lives will cross. And our lives have just been this like beautiful criss-cross. And I have to say, you’ve just been the kindest person from when I was 18 years old. They Jameela, Jameela. And you’ve just been oozed with kindness, been so compassionate, so sweet, always taken me under your wing and you’ve never changed. And I will always be just so grateful to have kind. And also it’s just such a love. It just really is a life affirming when you do meet people like you because you’re like people are really kind out there. [00:04:58][47.3]

Jameela: [00:04:59] That’s nice. And we weren’t always in a very kind industry either. And and yet we kind of we came up alongside each other in so many parallels. And it’s been so interesting that two very different women who’ve had two very different life experiences have consistently kind of moved along these parallels and ended up in the same space of around the same time, starting to kind of unravel. And in our journey back to who we are or journey towards who we want to be, we’ve decided to bring as many people along the ride with us as possible. I am I’m so keen to understand, like, when did your because you weren’t this is definitely not something that either of us were focused on when we first got into the industry. In fact, I think you and I both considered ourselves because we were both very bubbly and bright and always happy and always smiling. I definitely remember that about you. We were people who I always thought I was just fine until I fell apart. I didn’t think I ever had any mental health issues. I thought that my feeling of panic all the time was just because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know that that was a condition called anxiety. And so is this something that you were aware of back then or has this been a journey towards mental health? [00:06:15][75.8]

Poppy: [00:06:16] It is amazing that 10 years ago we don’t even speak the words mental health to each other, it was so far away from our vocabulary our conversation. And obviously it just shows you how how quickly the world has changed, thankfully, but also how much our understanding of the mind and our emotional experience as human beings have changed as well, because as yet completely the same as you, I understood and was conditioned to be happy, polite, performative. And even when I was feeling deeply insecure, terribly anxious, unbelievable perfectionism, I kind of thought that that was normal. And I was the only one, obviously having those feelings. And obviously now we realize that we aren’t the only ones. There are millions of people out there. And when I had that moment of realization, that was when I decided to change my entire life to focus on bringing tools to mental health. But I do say I do caveat with my mom is a psychotherapist. So I was aware of the mind. But it’s so different when your mother is a psychotherapist to actually understanding for yourself that you’ve got you’ve got to do something. And I was aware of it because my father suffered from severe mental illness with chronic stress and anxiety throughout his lifetime. And so I learned from a young age that mental health was something that you couldn’t see, but yet had a tremendous impact on everybody around around them. And and also from my mother, I understood that there were always things that you could change about the mind, but it was kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, my mom. Yeah, yeah yeah. And really, it took me to have a breakdown to realize actually we it’s it’s one thing knowing something, it’s another thing doing something. [00:08:19][123.3]

Jameela: [00:08:20] When was this breakdown? Because we’ve known each other all this time, but I wasn’t aware that this happened. [00:08:26][6.1]

Poppy: [00:08:28] So it was, I was must have been like twenty six and it just started this idea for Happy Not Perfect. I was hosting this show on Snapchat. We had thousands and millions of people watching and it was the first time where I realized that more people than I were also going, oh my God, I’m so worried about the future and oh my God, I’m so stressed out about this. I’m so stressed out about that. And that was the moment when I started realizing that I wanted to work in mental health. And this idea of how do I put my mom, who’s a psychotherapist, who has these tools that I can call her up on and tell, you know, how do I relax right now? What on earth do I do with this? How do I how do I turn this into something that more people can access? Because therapy is expensive. And and to be honest, the conversations that you have are so therapeutic. Even just having the conversation to realize that we’re all experiencing this is like very reassuring. And and at the time, I would have this thought, but I was traveling between the UK and and the US. I wasn’t sleeping and I had started working with business partners that I felt just like hated me. So I was in this work environment where I felt like I was so despised and it brought up my worst core toxic fears of I’m not enough, I’m not likable. I’ve got to work harder to prove myself. And I ended up my I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic because I learned that the age of 13 and and in the book I write a lot about the the beliefs that we absorb it when we were little, the rule book that we learned from those around us. It may have been our parents, it may have been our friends, it may have just been the environments then become the story we live out for life if we don’t challenge them. And I was living the story of I must work harder, I’m not enough, I must go to everything I had. I was the biggest people pleaser. So if somebody asked me to do something. Yes, yeah, absolutely no problem. I hated saying no, I hated conflict and it one day I woke up and my tummy was so bloated it was rock solid. My my whole my glands had swollen to the point where it was I couldn’t even swallow. And I was in L.A. all by myself and I thought, oh my God, oh my God, and I went to hospital and they just. And they did all their tests and they were like, you’re chronically exhausted and this is your immune system flaring up and you need to rest. And I was like, that’s not a big enough diagnosis, tell me, tell me I’ve got something more. Tell me, tell me. I’ve got something more. You’ve got to give me a a harder diagnosis than that, because I was in so much mental and physical pain and I didn’t realize our stress response was so toxic for the body. I had no idea that when we’re stressed, we release cortisol and enflames our body and and we can’t even think straight when we’re in that moment. And I remember, like weeks later, the smell of coffee. I couldn’t even go near and coffee was like my all time favorite it’s like my best friend. And I couldn’t have a sip of coffee because I couldn’t spike my adrenaline anymore. I was that burnt out and it took me honestly, like it sounds terrible. Probably took me over a year and a half to recover. [00:12:05][216.6]

Jameela: [00:12:06] I mean, it doesn’t sound terrible in any judgment way it just sounds like you had a really fucking terrible time. I mean, I knew you were going through a lot, but I had no idea that it was this bad. But again, I guess at that point, we didn’t really know each other well enough to tell each other the full truth of how we were both feeling. So I was also twenty six when I went through a nervous breakdown. And no, you didn’t know at the time when I was. It’s so funny and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to be more there for you. I had no idea. [00:12:31][25.6]

Poppy: [00:12:33] I think that’s the and that’s why the world has changed so much, because we were just on the phone being like, I’m going through this, I’m going through this. [00:12:40][6.7]

Jameela: [00:12:40] Exactly. Yeah. [00:12:41][0.8]

Poppy: [00:12:43] And and I have to say, you really appreciate the friends that you can be, you know, and and that’s really kind of, I guess the main message and the main learning I’ve had is how do we live our most authentic truth? Because when we sit down, you know, even with just a stranger or a really good friend, when someone’s willing just to say, oh, this is me, it is so reassuring. And that is what I appreciate about friendship so much because I feel like I’m going through this and you’re like, I’ve actually gone through that, Pops. And you may go through this and it’s OK because, you know, it’s actually not as bad as you think. [00:13:19][36.0]

Jameela: [00:13:19] That’s also one of my favorite things to do because you’re younger than me. So it’s one of my favorite things to do is to tell you all of the terrible shit mistakes I made to either make you feel better about yours or to stop you from making the same mistakes I’ve made. And so I guess that takes us to Happy Not Perfect, which starts to grow on social media and then became widely loved app. I have the app. I listen to your podcast. It’s excellent. And now you have a book coming out where you have taken all of these life lessons. Where you’ve even included your childhood diary entries, which is such a brave and vulnerable thing to do up. My childhood diary entries was so disturbing that I literally burned them eight years ago. I was like, no one can ever find this. No one can ever know. This is I never want to see this again. Oh, this is just I was such a twisted child. But you you’ve created this book that documents your kind of journey through understanding neurology and something that I think is so interesting. And this has been like a part of my experience of you. That has just been so fruitful and mind blowing is your dedication to understanding the actual function of the brain, not just the emotional language, not just the emotional tools, but part of your recovery has been actually understanding what our brains are doing, what our brains are built to do, what our survival mechanisms are, and really getting into the weeds of neuroscience. It’s been like watching you. I mean, watching everyone you’ve interviewed, all of the places you’ve gone and spoken, all of the things that you have done. It has been like watching you do essentially a PhD. In your very own PHD of neuroscience and psychology, so fascinating, [00:15:03][104.2]

Poppy: [00:15:05] I honestly think the root of all change is education. And when I was lying in bed, unable to move, I thought, I’ve got to understand what’s happening because our bodies are bloody brilliant and our brains are brilliant, too. The problem is, is that we are living lifestyles that are not conducive to healthy bodies and brains. And suddenly when you understand what is going on, you go, oh my God, of course. Of course it happened to me then. Of course, I was feeling anxious. It’s so normal. My brain was actually working. It was work. It was doing what it’s supposed to be doing. The problem is that actually maybe I need to change my external environment. And this idea, the brain has got kind of three inputs like bottom up. You’ve got obviously genes and then you’ve got nutrition. You’ve got top down when you know your thoughts and your thought health and how you can regulate emotions. And then you have external inputs and, you know, are you in a safe environment, what’s going on? If, for example, you’ve just recently gone through a breakup, of course, you are going to be going through the wringer and suddenly to understand that your brain is this melting pot of all of these different inputs, you are able to develop so much more compassion for yourself. And for me, it was like the complete change of my life from not knowing how my biology worked and then suddenly starting to learn piece by piece. And it’s taken me literally six years to get to this point where, you know, I felt ready to combine all the research, all the incredible experts and go ok for anybody who doesn’t have six years and just wants it, you know, in in a few hours. How do I just create this one book that has all the learnings and I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried everything to try and work out what was really, really going to fundamentally, fundamentally make a big shift, because we can all talk about how amazing meditation is that for me, it was impossible to sit down to do a meditation practice every day. And actually, for people who don’t kind of resonate with that kind of sitting still mindfulness, surely there must be other things out there. And that was really the mission was to go and understand my brain in a different way. [00:17:28][143.1]

Jameela: [00:17:28] Thank God you said that because I really can’t meditate for shit. I really can’t not for shit or fuck. I cannot do it. I’ve tried. I listen to the apps, I, I find the sleep meditations. I, my brain will not stop. And so I’m so excited to dig into the tools that you have learned over the course of your recovery essentially, I think we’ll call it. You seem in a much more recovered place. Talk to me about one of your favorite things that you learned throughout your process. I mean, one of my favorite things that you talk to me about, which is the fact that the brain, the brain kind of has two radio stations. You break it down to Calm FM and Stressed FM. Talk to me about that. [00:18:07][38.4]

Poppy: [00:18:07] Yes. So this was really inspired by Dr Rick Hansen, who has a book called Hardwiring Happiness. And he talks about how the brain only really has two settings. And I was like, oh, my God, this makes so much sense. The brain only has two radio stations. Either we are playing stressed FM, which is like rahhhh or playing Chilled FM, when suddenly we can make good decisions, we’re able to process our emotions. We’re feeling good. We can go to sleep. We’re digesting well and stressed FM is us feeling chaotic, usually like we’re supposed to have a bit of both. You know, stress is not all bad. Some stress is good. It kind of gets our adrenaline moving. It gives us some energy. Some stress is good. But the problem is, is that we’re now spending ninety eight percent of our days on stressed FM feeling totally chaotic. And as a consequence, we are in reaction mode. We’re in defensive mode. When we’re in defensive and reaction mode, we don’t make good decisions. We make decisions based on past patterns because that is how the brain formulates the present. The brain goes into a situation goes, oh my God, have I seen this before, have I seen this? Have I seen the before? And then it goes, oh yes. I think I have seen it before, seven years ago. And this is what happened. It was dangerous. Oh my God. We should feel anxious right now. And suddenly we are you know our stressed FM is blurring all sort of clarity in the present moment. Suddenly when we are in relaxed FM, the you know, the parasympathetic nervous system for any scientists out there. [00:19:40][92.8]

Jameela: [00:19:41] Break it down, though, for the for the people like me who didn’t go to school after they were sixteen, what is a parasympathetic [00:19:45][4.3]

Poppy: [00:19:46] So Stressed FM is the sympathetic nervous system. It’s the fight and flight mode. And we all know that it’s when our cortisol is pumping is when we’re in that fight flight or freeze state. And we are trying to make really quick reactions because go back to caveman times, this is really helpful. If we saw something on the floor and it looked like a snake, we wanted to be reacting very quickly. We didn’t want to have that rational part of our brain go I think it’s the stick or could be a snake. A stick a snake, because by that point, snake would have bitten us and we would have died maybe. But when we’re in the relaxed and relaxed fm, we are able to say we are able to stay curious is that stick? I think it’s a stick. It’s OK, I’m safe. No need to be worried. But the problem is, is that we have psychological threats now. So we receive an email and it’s like, oh, my God, she didn’t she didn’t sign it off, like, you know, nice to chat. She hated me. She hated me. And our stressed state just causes our brain to create narratives that are spinning us into circles that are not helpful for us. And so when we’re in that mode, if you ask yourself question what radio station are we playing, it’s such an easy question just to go, how do I feel? It’s quite easy to tell what radio station you’re playing is my heart beating is my is on my shoulders tense or am I is my shoulders relax. Am I feeling safe. How does my tummy feel. Is it relaxed? And then we start to know are we in a good state to be making a decision right now. [00:21:18][91.8]

Jameela: [00:21:20] That’s great. That’s so interesting. I feel like I’ve been in stressed fm for about thirty five years. I really need to change the bloody radio station. And so, OK, so let’s say I’m me, which I am and I’m in stressed FM, which I was in yesterday. What could I have done to switch over to calm fm? [00:21:42][21.8]

Poppy: [00:21:44] Great question. So this is step one of the facts, which is connection. Usually when we’re stressed, we have learned that uncomfortable emotions should be not felt. And so we often then can resort to numbing behavior. So we go on social media or we go online shopping or we go head down into work just to go. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t know if this is too much to feel. I don’t feel this. But again, the problem is we just then kind of prolong stress, stressed state. How to switch it back it’s just to, first of all, acknowledge to accept whatever you’re feeling, because that is totally fine. You take away the judgment and you go, OK, my today my mind feels and you label that feeling and this the diffusion technique. And a lot of people may have learned this in acceptance, commitment therapy. And by doing that, you say my mind today. My mind feels today you’re reminding yourself emotions are always temporary. [00:22:43][58.9]

Jameela: [00:22:43] OK, I’m going to do it. So my mind feels like a dumpster fire. Does that work as an answer? [00:22:49][5.3]

Poppy: [00:22:49] Today. [00:22:49][0.0]

Jameela: [00:22:49] Today, today, today. So it’s important to say today is that you don’t put a permanence on the feeling, OK, today or right now, my mind feels like a dumpster fire toilet. [00:23:00][11.0]

Poppy: [00:23:01] Great. [00:23:01][0.0]

Jameela: [00:23:02] Great. [00:23:02][0.0]

Poppy: [00:23:03] And so you go my mind. Suddenly you are, then you are disassociating yourself. You are not your emotion. Your mind today feels like a dumpster fire. So, your. [00:23:15][12.3]

Jameela: [00:23:16] Toilet. [00:23:16][0.0]

Poppy: [00:23:17] Toilet. So you’re able to have this like slight separation. And then you think to yourself, where am I feeling it? Where am I? Where are you feeling that dumpster fire toilet. A feeling in your body, Jameela? [00:23:28][10.5]

Jameela: [00:23:29] OK, I’m feeling it in my stomach mostly. That’s normally where I feel most of my tension. My brain is quite numb because I think I might be neurologically damaged from too much stress as a child. So I don’t often feel stress that I can recognize in my brain. And I think a lot of people are like this. I am I’m one of many people who has who pushes all of their feelings down into their body. So mind will come out and kidney stones or digestive issues or aches and pains. I store all of my grief in my body and my eating disorder habits, especially when I overeat or used to anyway were because I was trying to physically push feelings down with food, like down from my throat, away from my head, down into my body, so that my stomach ache would externally reveal the internal turmoil, turmoil that I was in. Does that make sense? [00:24:27][57.6]

Poppy: [00:24:28] Oh that makes complete sense, because when we’re feeling stressed, why would the body start digesting if we were running away from a lion? So so it just so digestion stops when you’re feeling stressed. And that’s why when I had my complete breakdown, I was bloated for months. I just didn’t go to the bathroom. I mean, probably too much information. I was deeply constipated. [00:24:50][21.8]

Jameela: [00:24:51] That’s fine that what’s happened to us all. So I’m I’m certain I didn’t shit between the age of twenty four and twenty seven. So. So not once. Not one time. [00:24:58][6.9]

Poppy: [00:24:58] Oh. So this is how we’re going to change it. So I want you to they’re called micro flexes in the book. Relax your shoulders down, OK. And I won’t need to place your hands on your belly and breathe into the belly is if you’re expanding the belly so much and push that belly out, get that gut out expanded. And now exhale slowly, barely releases towards the spine. Now let’s do that again, let’s inhale into the belly with our shoulders down, expanding the belly, fill that belly up or with air relaxing air. Hold it for a moment for as long as you can and exhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale out and continue breathing just gently. Now by breathing into the belly, we activate our vagus nerve we start telling our brain. [00:25:47][48.6]

Jameela: [00:25:47] What’s the vagus nerve wait what’s the vagus nerve. [00:25:50][2.5]

Poppy: [00:25:51] Vagus nerve is connected from our gut into our brain. It’s one of the most important signals that that is attached to our nervous system as part of our nervous system. And it controls whether we’re in the fight or flight, whether we’re playing stressed fm or chilled fm. So when we are feeling stressed, if you just go back to the breath and it feels so simple, oh my God, we all breath we all breathe. But nine out of 10 people breathe into their chest the entire time with their shoulders tensed. And if we just consciously relax our shoulders down, we’re using biochemical signals. We’re using our body to tell our brain that we are safe because if we’re breathing into the belly, clearly there’s no lion about to attack us because our bodies say no, no brain was safe, otherwise we wouldn’t be barely breathing. If you look at how a baby breathes, they breathe into their belly. And then at the age of five years old, they go to school and we get hunched over desks. We may get punched in the the tummy or as women were told to suck in and our breath travels up to our chest hiking up that part, that sympathetic, nervous state the entire time, stressed fm. So we’re breathing to our chest our body saying to our brain. I’m stressed, I’m stressed, I’m stressed. [00:27:01][70.5]

Jameela: [00:27:02] That is fascinating. It breaks down. It’s such a it’s such a simple thing to learn. And and I only came across this sort of information, I think probably via you a couple of years ago. And whenever I realize I’m in that state, I always find it so hilarious as to how how simple human beings are and how how unprepared and undesigned, we are for the modern world, especially the age of social media, because, you know, you were talking about the fact that when stressed FM is playing, that’s when you shouldn’t make decisions, right? [00:27:36][33.4]

Poppy: [00:27:36] Yes. [00:27:36][0.0]

Jameela: [00:27:37] Social media, especially when you’re on the receiving end of of of trolling or maybe you’re watching someone else being trolled or maybe you’re watching the news cycle and it’s fucking stressful, especially as it has been in the last year and a half, but also just forever for the last 11 years. We have the same response to the response we would have had back in the day. As you were saying, like from a pissy email even can send us trigger us into that fight or flight response. I, I laugh so much at the idea that when I’ve been on the receiving end of trolling or demands or like true audacity online, those have been the times where I’ve been like, I should tweet something publicly that’ll be screen-grabbed and kept forever. This is a great time for me to post my opinion on this huge subject or on this deeply personal subject. I, I can’t believe that that’s when I’ve made that decision. And almost all of the time I spend on social media, I must be on stressed fm because it’s so fucking stressful. And so why we ever post anything is beyond me, considering how terrifying that space is and how triggered into like old cavemen fight or flight space we are. [00:28:47][70.1]

Poppy: [00:28:47] Right because your human your basic human needs. Am I loved. Am I safe? Am I enough? are being challenged when you’re online because suddenly someone sends you a mean comment and that is like the tribe going, oh, you well you’re not accepted anymore. And so it’s our survival mechanism being like it’s it’s so difficult to wean ourselves off not being affected by other people’s opinions and comments, even though we know they’re trolls, even though we know bullies are bullies, their words and everybody should be so much more aware of the impact of their words on another person. We are living in a world where we are emotions are contagious. Our words are very powerful because they it is our brain reacts in the same way as it would to someone sending you a bow and arrow. [00:29:41][54.4]

Jameela: [00:29:42] Yeah. And the the reason the tribal thing makes us so reactive and often act in terror or make decisions that maybe aren’t even really integral to self for our beliefs is because if you feel as though you’re being kicked out of the tribe, the I’m going to use the term cave man or whatever, the part of your brain that is activated is. If I’m separated from the tribe, then I’m in danger. That being in a tribe, being in a group, being in a collective keeps me safe. And if I am authorized, if I’m out here on my own, then I have to fend for myself effectively in what is the wild. And even though we now have doors and civilization, quote unquote, and windows and locks and and, you know, we’re no longer constantly under threat, depending on where we live from wild animals, we still have the feeling that we are because our brains haven’t updated to this technological boom. [00:30:35][53.0]

Poppy: [00:30:36] They haven’t updated. I always say, you know, the human ability to create is so much faster than the human ability to adapt. So we’ve created this incredibly fast world and we are running on our default settings. We spend 90 percent of our day in autopilot mode, information theory found. Researchers found that the brain that the body sends the brain 11 million pieces of information a second and our conscious brain can only process 50 so we’re overwhelmed. Of course we’re overwhelmed. And also like technology, they say nobody can multitask. But women, men like any identity, any gender you identify with, like no one can no one can multitask. What we do is you multi switch. So when you’re working and suddenly you get a WhatsApp notification or you get something else in education and you switch attention, what you’re doing is you’re just degrading your ability to concentrate on either task. And so we’re constantly being being unable to allowed to really fully dive into a book or a piece of work because we’ve always been distracted, distracted, and that is really overwhelming for the brain. The brain really hasn’t changed much over thousands of years, but yet our world has. And so this is why I let part of the book in the strapline is Upgrade Your Mind, because it is a daily practice to upgrade our mindset. And that’s why one of the biggest points of the book I talk about is we’ve got to live a life of flexible thinking, including flexible thinking in the way that we approach life. And part of being a flexible thinker is being deeply curious, having the time to question actually like, is this true? Is this thought I’m having true? I’m online. Someone sent me a horrible comment. And before we react, we ask, is this true? Can I be 100 percent sure this is true? [00:32:31][114.6]

Jameela: [00:32:32] And does this impact my life? And does this make me unsafe? Because even if it is true, does it actually impact your day, your life, your existence, whether you are worthy of love, whether you’re going to be OK, whether you’re going to survive, because it’s our actual survival skills that get called into question. Sometimes when we receive negativity online, we think, oh, this is the end of the world. This is legitimately the end of the world is why we focus always on the negative comments rather than the thousands of positive comments or the negative thing that’s happened in the day rather than the many positive and safe, wonderful, perhaps like mundane parts of our day, right? [00:33:11][39.3]

Poppy: [00:33:12] Yes, we have an 80 percent negative bias because, again, the brain was developed to predict and protect. And so, of course, we have this, like, natural inclination to remember every single negative comment that’s ever been said to us and forget the positive ones, because that wasn’t going to help us survive. And also, we have a thing called confirmation bias in which we like to confirm our beliefs. We like to confirm how we see the world. So, for example, the reason why I included my diary entries in the book is to show people the beliefs that you absorbed were instilled in you at the age of 12, can continue running your life and your brain wants to confirm those beliefs over and over again. So at 12, you believed you weren’t enough. You were going to find you’re going to find evidence across your entire life to confirm or I know I’m not enough. Look, that’s more evidence that I’m not enough. And so we have to challenge we’ve got to get so curious, like the other beliefs I hold even true. Are they serving me? Because what was what was true when you were 12 is definitely not true now. And it was probably not true when you were 12 either. [00:34:19][66.3]

Jameela: [00:34:19] I know. I know. [00:34:20][0.8]

Jameela: [00:34:28] Talk to me about stiff thinkers and flexible thinkers, you were talking briefly on flexible thinking. [00:34:33][4.9]

Poppy: [00:34:34] Well, stiff thinking is is a habit all human beings have because of just what we’ve covered. We’re stuck in default mode. We’re stuck with this negative bias with our confirmation bias stuck in our stressed fm. And as a consequence, we are like we believe everything we think. And we if somebody doesn’t agree with us, then they’re wrong because we can’t understand that a different world from how we are seeing it from within. [00:35:07][32.3]

Jameela: [00:35:08] Is an example of this something like in my twenties, I had severe social anxiety and also like at school, I had severe social anxiety and was really badly bullied. So my belief system was I’m never really going to be good at making friends. I’m never going to have friends. I’m always going to be alone. And then later realize when I have anxiety and my anxiety is what pushes people away and also stops me from even opening myself up to other people. So that’s me moving from being a stiff thinker who spent 20 years thinking, I’m never going to have friends into being a flexible thinker, who just realizes some people you have chemistry with, some people you don’t. And some of this is just anxiety. [00:35:47][38.9]

Poppy: [00:35:48] Yes. Yes. That is like the most perfect example. And, you know, my mom being a psychotherapist, you know, she sees clients who are in their 70s and 80s and it nearly makes me break down into tears, hearing stories of people in their 80s, finally, that accepting that actually they’re not stupid and people love them. And they spent 80 years of their life stuck in stiff thoughts of what happened when they were eight. This one man in particular, when he was eight, the whole class started and he said he couldn’t spell his name correctly. So the whole class stood up, said, you’re so stupid, you’re so stupid. And he spent his entire life believing he was stupid. And and it just it makes me sick. But it just made me burst into tears when she was telling me the story because, you know, we have science and this is one, I think the things that really like just got me totally hooked on understanding like the brain’s neurology. Science has proven that we have this thing called neuroplasticity, that our brain is malleable. And and I and and so science has proven we can change our brain, we can change our outlook. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy because when we believe something about ourselves our bitchy inner critic, which I like to call mine a name and I call mine Regina after the mean girl in Mean Girls. And I’m like, Regina can be vicious. And there’s some times when we’re feeling anxious that inner critic has louder and louder and louder and louder and it’s really difficult to go. I know that’s not true. I can be flexible right now. I can sit here and be in that emotion, but stay curious at the same time and so flexible thinking is about curiosity, choice and commitment. And curiosity my greatest inspiration for this was Byron Katie. And she has these four questions that that I learned from her. So, for example, the thought that, like, you know, I’m never I’m everyone hates me. Is this true? And we’re like, well, I think it is true. Everyone hates me. Can I be a hundred percent sure this is true, that I’m just like, well, no, I can’t look into their mind. So we don’t know. How does this thought make me feel? Well, awful unconfident just just the worst. I don’t want to go out again, like, oh, I’m just going to stay at home because that’s where I belong. Who would I be without the thought, like open to opportunities, having experiences, learning, growing. And we realized through curiosity that so much of our suffering is within our thoughts that are often not true. And then we move on to choice. And the reason why I included choice in this flex method to help us move from stiff thinking to flexible thinking is because our brain again, it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s been working in a certain way for so many years. So if we want to change it in any way for it to be kinder to ourselves, we have to have a make a conscious choice to and we’ve got to make a conscious choice to choose compassion, because at the root of every human, we only have two emotions, love and fear. And every thought is either coming from fear or stepping into love. And so when we ask questions like how would I advise a friend experiencing what I am now, what would I tell a friend experiencing what I am now? Not only do we start actually activating the wise part of our brain to tap into our wisdom, because we can only be in our wisdom when we’re all relaxed fm. When we’re on stressed fm we are working from fear and we can’t access the buckets of wisdom we all have. So choosing to be compassionate is the greatest choice we all have, and it takes work, and sometimes it takes us to ask that question over and over again, how would I how would I advise a friend? What would I tell a friend? [00:39:37][229.5]

Jameela: [00:39:38] Yeah, I talk about this a lot when it comes to body image that I have to I’ve had to learn how to be my own best friend. Where would I ever tell a friend that they don’t look good enough to go up for that job or they are too fat or old to be loved or they are not worthy of being accepted in society because they haven’t met a certain, like, ridiculous, unrealistic societal ideal? No, I would never I would never say these things to anyone. I have so much love and respect for other human beings, even ones that I don’t know, so much more love and respect than I have had for myself in the past. And so I’ve had to learn to be my own just to have my own inner Beyonce. So obviously, Beyonce is my best friend. I don’t really know her, but, you know, but I’ve had to learn how to to to to cheer myself on the way that I would cheer you on or someone else. So all I do is encourage other women all the time. And yet it’s been so hard to learn how to how to muster that up for myself. And now that I’ve learned how to, it has helped me just become so and so much bolder, even when maybe I shouldn’t. I try. And it’s interesting, like, you know, I’ve been thinking about this so much lately, the way that we discourage each other. In particular, we discourage women, we discourage women. But we are a generation, especially like lately in the last couple of years, I feel as though we’ve entered a period of of of encouraging stiff thinking of telling people who they are. It’s like, oh, you’ve made that mistake. This is who you are. This is who you will always be. There’s no point bothering to change because we’re never going to believe that you’re going to change. And and we’ve we’re writing you off because of that mistake. I’ve made mistakes. I have I have misrepresented myself. I fucked something up or I’ve been bad. Anything on camera, on the radio. And I have been told by hundreds of thousands of people before, like just kill yourself or you’re worthless or you’re annoying and you will always be annoying. You should never do this again. You should leave social media. You shouldn’t bother to come back and try and do better, or you’re only trying because you want to be accepted now. So therefore there’s no value when you’re trying. All I get is discouragement, discouragement, discouragement, discouragement. And part of my journey, and I think it’s yours as well, has just been to push through that discouragement and be like, you don’t get to tell me whether or not I’m capable of change, whether or not I can improve, whether or not it’s worth my time to try to become a better person or a smart person. This whole podcast is just an experiment in seeing like, how much can I learn from these excellent people, people like you and how much can I grow? And people online don’t get to tell us that. I’ve got to tell you, whoever you are listening to this right now, who maybe didn’t say the right thing politically or whatever, uh, maybe ten years ago you said the wrong thing. No one gets to tell you that it’s too late for you to change. And you bringing up this you know, this devastating story, this eighty year old just shows that, like your you can become a flexible thinker even at 80, that you you never have to write yourself off as I am beyond hope. [00:43:03][205.0]

Poppy: [00:43:04] Absolutely. Like forgiveness and compassion are two of the most important things for us to remember as human beings, because without forgiveness and forgiveness of ourselves, we stay in really low vibrational energies. And also, if someone’s unable to forgive you, it means they’re unable to forgive themselves. And that is actually so sad. And this guy called Hawkins did this scale of consciousness and he actually documented that every emotion has a different emotional frequency. And so shame, regret, guilt, fear, all of the emotions that we feel are really low vibration, acceptance, compassion, joy, a higher vibrational. [00:43:52][47.1]

Jameela: [00:43:53] What does that mean when people say vibrational? I’ve never understood this. [00:43:56][3.0]

Poppy: [00:43:57] Well, it just goes back to everything is made up of energy. Right. We’re just all just atoms vibrating and you know it. You know, you’re something brilliant has happened and you’re just bouncing off the ceiling and you just go to meet your friend and she thinks brilliance happened to her. And she is like, wow, wow, wow, wow. And you leave. [00:44:15][17.9]

Jameela: [00:44:16] I feel like we had a conversation like that yesterday over the phone. Where like, I felt I felt like I could achieve anything after getting off the phone with you because we were just, like, excited and. And loving each other and encouraging each other and and making exciting plans and considering that the world is our oyster for a moment and I felt so wonderful for hours and hours and hours. So that’s my that’s my higher vibration. That’s my higher energy. [00:44:45][29.3]

Poppy: [00:44:47] Yeah because it was joyful. We were connecting. We were excited and and I did. Me, too. I was like shaking for an hour afterwards, like little I couldn’t even sit down. And, you know, for us to be in those higher vibrational states, like, we’ve got to forgive, we’ve got to forgive the shame that we all carry. We all carry regret. We all carry embarrassment. All of us have done it we’re imperfect. What is so you know, and this is why you’re such a glorious leader. We’re so lucky to have individuals like you in society because you allow us all to forgive ourselves because you’re saying, look, I fucked up guys and I’m going to stop. By the way, you haven’t fucked up. But, you know, if you think you have the fact that you’re so vocal about even thinking of yourself, this is the whole thing with all of us, all the things that, you know, let’s say everyone listening here. So we all in a room sharing the things we think we fucked up on, all of us would be like, babe, that’s not a fuck up, you know. [00:45:49][62.1]

Jameela: [00:45:49] I know. I know, I know. But yeah, but some some of us get in particular, I think women and women of color. But then add to that being a public figure, you get held to really impossible standards. And so. I just want to show people like, hey, look, I used to be a slut shaming sexist prick 10 years ago, maybe less, maybe eight years ago, God who didn’t know the term patriarchy. And now I’m like a fairly reasonable, kind, loving woman promoting feminist who understands the correct terminology. And now I’m putting most of the money I make into raising other women or other people who are marginalized online. So I’ve gone from being a legitimate bad guy, bad person who says bad, negative things to people publicly, to now becoming a much more decent and integral, more informed person, if I can do it. Old me, you know, mistakes.dotcom, if I can do it, anyone can do it. And that’s the thing that I most want people to realize I want to encourage. I’m not interested in discouragement. It doesn’t achieve truly anything. [00:46:59][70.1]

Poppy: [00:47:00] And we’re also very, very uncreative. The fact is, we’ve got a lot of world problems and I truly believe our creativity and the human genius, we will create solutions to the problem that if we’re creating a society that everybody is so terrified about making a mistake, large or small, like in public or even just in the workplace or even at home, we are not growing. And the brain, when we are uncomfortable, when we’re making mistakes, it actually loves it because it’s creating new neural pathways. And so learning and making mistakes is how we grow. And we wouldn’t be living in this like evolved society with this incredible technology if we didn’t make a few mistakes along the way, because then we learn how to do it better. [00:47:43][43.1]

Jameela: [00:47:44] We had Dr. Deepak Chopra on this podcast talking to me about the fact that the way that we learn the best and most effectively is when we make a mistake. That’s actually when our brain can process and maintain the information in the sharpest, most helpful, effective way is from our mistakes. And mistakes are kind of vital in order for us to learn or definitely don’t do that again because it makes a bigger impact on us. [00:48:07][23.1]

Poppy: [00:48:08] And also when we’re frustrated, because if you’ve ever learn a musical instrument, it’s when you start getting really, really frustrated and you’re like, I just can’t get it. If you try to learn like a sport or when is any new skill you’re trying to learn or the language, you start getting very, very frustrated. And that is when, you know, the brain is in an accelerated learning time is when you get frustrated. So I think sometimes we we always assume that, like, again, we we we kind of put happiness in this premium emotion that we should always be feeling. But actually, frustration is a really, really helpful emotion, because that’s when we our brain is trying to work problems out. And often when you are in a growth period in life, it feels deeply challenging. And we then misinterpret that signal as, oh, it’s wrong this is not this I’m not right for this. Let’s you start a new job. And it’s like really frustrating and and and difficult. Actually, you you’re exactly what you should be because, you know, that frustration is like growth. [00:49:01][53.6]

Jameela: [00:49:03] Mm hmm. Yes. Within reason, if you’re really, really uncomfortable and you really hate it, then you should leave then then then maybe that will be your form of growth just to just to make sure I caveat always with that. [00:49:14][11.1]

Poppy: [00:49:14] I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean quitting is one of the strongest things that you can do because often we’re like conditioned like never to quit. I definitely think I wish I had quit things and. [00:49:25][10.8]

Jameela: [00:49:26] Oh my God. Me too. Oh my God. That that, that, that, that idea that quitting is failure and actually it’s self-preservation. I mean, the idea that self-preservation was a dirty word until like three years ago and selfishness is a dirty word when I’m really just starting to willfully try to embrace selfishness as something that is a good thing, a huge luxury and one that I shouldn’t shun when I have the opportunity to be selfish. Like, for example, I don’t have lots of children who are depending on me right now in my household. I can sleep in on the weekend. Like, how can I how can I disregard the luxury of the space to be selfish and not just take some time out for myself? Who who wins if I just burn myself out? [00:50:08][42.0]

Poppy: [00:50:09] I mean, absolutely, I think you touched upon a really important point in this whole conversation around mental health, which is there is like one size that does not fit like one size does not fit all. Like fundamentally, everybody is is their own expert. Everybody knows themselves the best. And I think we do sometimes come to a culture of like, oh, I need to ask so many other people to understand what I’m feeling inside. And actually, you know, is, as you just said, actually, no, I need to self preservation. I did not need to push myself into harder environments. And I think that’s a really, really powerful point because, you know, someone everyone can say different things, but really, you know, you yourself are your greatest, like, wise teacher. [00:51:00][51.4]

Jameela: [00:51:01] Yeah, I love a good fuck it bucket. I like to just chuck it all in the fuck it bucket. That’s really honestly just been my route to recovery. You start your book with a chapter called Fuck My Life? [00:51:12][10.7]

Poppy: [00:51:14] Yeah. [00:51:14][0.0]

Jameela: [00:51:15] Which I think is extremely, extremely inspiring and cool and very personal. I mean, this is a very personal pursuit that you’re putting a lot of yourself out there. And I think that it’s incredibly brave and inspiring. I feel like I don’t mean it in a patronizing way, but I feel very, very proud to watch you embrace this and to become just increasingly authentic and vulnerable, even on such a public level over the course of my life. Because honestly, you were just so people pleasing when we were younger. So was I. Maybe that’s why we didn’t become closer until we were older, until we became our authentic selves, you know what I mean? We will see each other around, but maybe are like heightened hyper people pleasing kind of facade. You you taught me this terminology called Duck Syndrome that I think we were both so guilty of. And maybe I still sometimes, but I feel like it may be like repelled us away from each other, but maybe it got in the way of us becoming as close as we now are. And I fucking adore you, but I’m so happy to have you in my life. But would you please explain what Duck Syndrome is? [00:52:23][68.8]

Poppy: [00:52:25] Oh, yeah. I’m such a corporal of Duck Syndrome. Well, I was. In duck syndrome is basically living life like a duck. When you’re trying to look so graceful, you’ve got it all together, which I feel kind of like Instagram is for many people. This is such an experience, in duck syndrome where you’re like, look, here’s my life and I’ve got this and I’ve got this. And underneath it, underneath the surface, you are paddling for dear life. And this is really what kind of culminated in my total, like chronic exhaustion, because I was just so desperate to try and look to everyone else that I had life together and underneath I was literally like, oh, my God, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And and then it all fell apart and and and you can witness all the you know, and it’s funny, you know, they always say life like hits you with three busses at the same time, you know, one thing goes wrong and it’s like bash and then I guess another bash and you’re just kind of like on the floor. But like one of the greatest. She was a great friend to me and alleged that like an old sister and she was a yogi. And she said, Poppy never waste a breakdown. They often our most transformative moments because they’re moments of change when we realize that we cannot keep going with these old habits, these toxic old habits that are so ingrained into us. And it’s probably the best thing she could have ever told me because it was almost it gave me permission to almost kind of go, OK, OK, I, I’m, I, I can’t go on like this. [00:53:58][93.1]

Jameela: [00:53:58] I accept change. [00:53:59][0.7]

Poppy: [00:54:00] I accept change. [00:54:00][0.6]

Jameela: [00:54:01] That’s fucking great. Never waste a break down. That’s such an empowering way of looking at it. I wish someone had said that to me during mine so that wouldn’t have taken me so many years to put mine to use, but I think I didn’t waste mine in the end. I think it’s everything that I Weigh is and everything that I feel and how I live my life now is all of the response to that breakdown. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was also just very expensive and stressful at the time. [00:54:32][31.0]

Poppy: [00:54:33] Right, right. But you wouldn’t you wouldn’t take it back [00:54:36][3.4]

Jameela: [00:54:37] 100 percent I would definitely not take it back. I was on the worst possible path. The thing I want to know from you now, as as I lose you to your busy life as a mental health leader, is what are the therapies that you recommend to these people? Because we’ve kind of covered the the abandoning of shame and recognizing that your brain is just doing whatever it’s going to do to try and keep you alive the best way it knows how and understanding what you’re doing, checking in with yourself, seeing where you’re at and and starting to try and not manipulate, but maneuver yourself into a more friendly and and healthy and safe space emotionally, internally and maybe even externally in your life. We’ve covered those things. What are some of the therapies that you would recommend to the people who find like, fuck I feel like I have stressed FM on all of the time. I don’t really know how to make that transition because it sounds so easy to make that transition. And and you’ve definitely laid out so many of the the ways in which to do that just in this podcast alone. But what are some of the practical things that someone like me or someone like our listeners what are the steps that we can take in order to actively create long lasting change? [00:55:59][82.0]

Poppy: [00:56:02] So I obviously am a huge advocate of therapy because my mother is one and I’ve gone through years of therapy myself and I’ve tried so many different ones. And what I would try to encourage people is it I actually love therapy. I actually find it really fun because I think the greatest gift we can give ourselves is self-awareness. To understand ourself, like the ancient Greeks said, know thyself. And it was like one of the best things thousands of years ago, they said. And then we kind of forgot ourselves. And now we’re coming back to this point where we’re understanding ourselves and want and this desire to understand, to understand ourselves again. So and also all therapists, it’s like dating a boyfriend, you know, like I’ve heard stories of one of my friends went to a therapist and she really didn’t enjoy the experience. And as a consequence she’s like, it’s not for me. But actually there are so many different. It’s it really is finding that person that can gel with you, that understands you. And and so, for example, my mother does therapy called brain working recursive therapy, BWRT. And I think that is absolutely incredible. It’s a new therapy that has had significant research on it. And it’s it’s it basically rewires your brain at the subconscious level. So you may have probably heard about hypnotherapy, but she’s also an incredible therapy because, again, our subconscious is where are all our memories are stored and our conscious brain is obviously, obviously kind of, you know, all of our thoughts and, you know, actually quite limited as a hypnotherapy can really access that subconscious brain, which is usually the driver for how we think and behave and react. So hypnotherapy I’m a huge fan of I think you understand. I think you find memories that were very formative and actually you can, with your older self, look back on and go, oh, that. Actually, you know what? I didn’t need to feel so scared. At that moment I was I was OK. And there’s a lot of like kind of, you know, using the present to heal the past. And I think that’s wonderful. And then I think you’ve obviously got CBT, which is like which is brilliant, and that’s [00:58:21][139.5]

Jameela: [00:58:21] cognitive behavioral therapy? [00:58:22][1.1]

Poppy: [00:58:23] Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And you can talk about DBT dialect behavioral therapy. [00:58:26][2.5]

Jameela: [00:58:27] I did NDR Eye Movement Desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which I talk about all the time. [00:58:32][4.7]

Poppy: [00:58:33] Exactly. And then, you know, you’ve got like slightly holistic therapies, which, for example, massage. I know this sounds strange, but actually if me, for example, the beginning of the pandemic, I was on my own a lot. And actually we realized that we haven’t been touched and we need oxytocin and the feeling of touch. So if you haven’t been able to hug anyone for ages, you could be like really low on just physical touch. So I think it’s really interesting to, you know, again, look at the mind as I from from the bottom up outside in and the top down. And and there’s all sorts of you know, for you it could be the acupuncture that could be releasing energy from the body because as you said, you know, your issues in your tissues. So I think you use your mental health as well as almost like a constant adventure. It’s not a game that we ever complete. We can’t just suddenly go, boom, my mental health is fixed. Whoo! It is forevermore for the rest of our lives. We are always going to be in different environments, situations, and our brain always needs to be nourished and nurtured and [00:59:43][70.4]

Jameela: [00:59:43] understood [00:59:43][0.0]

Poppy: [00:59:44] and understood and look. And some therapies can be expensive. So there’s always that for anyone on the different price points, there’s lots of different things you can do. This group therapy, which I think is absolutely brilliant. And so go on. Go on a mental health adventure. [01:00:01][16.7]

Jameela: [01:00:03] I think it’s the single best investment you’ll ever make into your life if you have that ability to be able to access that. And also, you know, there have been many times in my life where I couldn’t afford therapy, you know, where you know, there are some countries, though, where you’re not as lucky as we are in the UK, where at least we have it for free on the NHS. But you’re on a waiting list for six months to a year. But in the times when I haven’t been able to access therapy or, for example, in the pandemic, what I went through like a mini nervous breakdown last February, I couldn’t access my therapist because she was just so much more needed by other people. And also we weren’t able to physically be in the same room with each other, friends, friends who actually love you for your whole self. Friends, who actually accept you for who you are and you don’t judge you and trigger you and pick at you. They are the most extraordinary interim on your road to being able to access an actual professional, it doesn’t mean you should necessarily always take their advice. Not everyone should take mine, I’m sure. But I. I just want you to know that even sometimes just hearing your own thoughts out loud, sometimes even just writing it down. I never used to take journalling seriously, but it’s honestly like free therapy in that a big part of the challenge is the fact that we don’t even know what we’re feeling. It’s just these thoughts are bouncing around our head all of the time. And because of the confirmation bias that you were talking about earlier, we’re going. Yes, that’s a perfectly acceptable thought. That is a true thing. And because we don’t hear ourselves say it out loud, away from all of the chaos of our brains, we can’t register what we’ve said and how untrue or problematic or painful or sad that thing is. And so saying out loud to someone that you trust or writing it down, writing down your core beliefs, you talk a lot about this in your book, like core beliefs can help expose to you what you’re really feeling. And even that can can put you towards a path towards change. And I what I love about your book and what I think is so important about your book, Poppy, is the fact that you are giving people that introduction to understanding themselves, to accepting themselves, to living shamelessly. And and I had never looked at mental health as something that was physical. And that was I never took into account neurology the way that I should have when I was younger. I never took into account brain chemicals. I never took into account like ancient patterns of how our brains work to protect us. I had no idea that the brain was only built to predict and protect and that 80 percent of our thoughts were negative, setting us up for so much failure if we don’t go out of our way to make ourselves happy. I’ve learned so much from you. I’m so excited for people to read your book and to listen to your podcast and to follow your work, because in doing so and starting to investigate my brain properly is the organ that it is. I started to treat it the way I would my stomach and my liver and my lungs. I started to care for it in a way that doesn’t just feel ethereal. I think that’s the only word I had right now. But it feels intangible. It feels very like meta and vague the mind. And you found a way to explain it to people in a way that makes it feel like there’s hope for a solution. You’ve made the brain feel practical and and approachable. And for that, I think you’re just the best. So before you leave, would you please tell me, Poppy Jamie, what do you weigh? [01:03:47][224.0]

Poppy: [01:03:48] I weigh. The question always makes me want to cry, doesn’t it? [01:03:55][6.7]

Jameela: [01:03:55] So many people cried during the question, so many people just [01:03:58][3.2]

Poppy: [01:03:59] Um, you know, I weigh being a part um being a sister, being a daughter, being a friend, and and and hopefully being a person that can, you know, help other people find tools through my own journey. So [01:04:23][23.4]

Jameela: [01:04:23] Oh god you’re going to make me cry now Poppy for fucks sake, we’re English. We’re not supposed to do this. This is illegal in England. So you’re definitely someone who helps a lot of people. And you’ve helped and taught me so much. And I love you loads and thank you for giving me so much of your time. You’re so generous. And everyone go out and buy Poppy’s book. [01:04:48][24.7]

Poppy: [01:04:48] Oh, thank you so much. You mean the world to me. And you’re a constant inspiration. And I Weigh has totally changed my understanding of my you know, how I even relate to myself. So thank you so much. [01:05:02][13.7]

Jameela: [01:05:03] Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Aaron Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music that you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. I really appreciate it and amps me up to bring on better and better guess. Lastly, at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at one eight one eight six six zero five five four three or email us what you way at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. It’s not in pounds and kilos. Please don’t send that. It’s all about you just you know, you’ve been on the Instagram anyway and now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners. [01:05:53][50.3]

Listener: [01:05:58] Hi, I’m Sonmez from India, I’m 22 years old. Ever since I was a child, I have had anxiety and my earliest memories of me is feeling completely scared, having really bad stomachaches and just wandering around the school because of unbearable amount of anxiety. But growing up, I realized that I have so much more in me and so much more to offer. I weigh that I am a singer and I love to sing and I love to play the ukulele. I weigh that I’m a teacher of emotions, I did social and emotional learning to 13 beautiful, amazing girls at a juvenile care center in Delhi. I love them and they love me back. And it’s amazing. I weigh that I’m a feminist. I care about equality and I care about equal rights for everyone, all genders. I weigh that I am an empath and I am a great listener. People find me very warm and they are easily able to open up to me. And I love having conversations with different people. I weigh that I’m smart and I’m I’m pretty intelligent and I know it. Yeah. And I weigh that I don’t care about my looks anymore. I look in the mirror and I just see a smart, bright and beautiful person. [01:05:58][0.0]

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